Yesterday, I reviewed TOUCH, Alexi Zentner’s remarkable new novel on this blog. The other day, I interviewed Zentner via email. His responses were fantastic, especially on the question of balancing realistic and fabulistic impulses. Magical elements, he says, can sometimes be a cop-out or crutch that prevents writers from delving deeper into the more human elements of their stories. I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the last couple of days.

So, without any further ado, here’s that interview:

New writers often are told that they should “love their characters.” I see a tremendous amount of love lavished on just about all the characters in your novel, yet tragedy falls so many of them. Was it hard as a writer to write those tragedies?

I always love my characters. I know that there are some writers and readers who like to have dislikable characters, but I think that runs counter to who I am as a person. Another writer (one of my best friends) told me recently that I always expect people to be good and generous and kind, and end up disappointed more than she is, because she never has that expectation.

That being said, I think most of the people I write about are fundamentally flawed in one or multiple ways, and they have to be in order to be complicated, interesting characters. I had a story where the protagonist cheats on his wife—with her sister—while she's serving in Iraq, but I also think that readers feel sympathetic to him. I did.

In TOUCH, however, because it's narrated by Stephen, who was a child when so much of this happened, and because there is so much myth and memory wrapped around the novel, there is a certain luminous glow conferred by his own love towards his mother, his father, his grandfather, and I can't figure out if that came from me loving the characters, or if my love for the characters came from their love for each other.

But is it hard to write about their tragedies? No. It sounds cold, but no, as a writer, it's not hard to write about their tragedies because I never considered another alternative. There are plenty of families in Sawgamet that had lives filled with less sorrow, but they were also filled with less joy and wonder.

Were you ever worried about straying too far into folklore & fable? As I said, I loved the realistic human drama. Despite all the Ijirait, Qallupilluit, and Mahaha creatures that terrorize the characters, TOUCH could never be described as a fantasy novel. How did you manage to balance fantasy & realism so well?

I think the heart of the story—in any story, really—is the interaction between characters, human dynamics, and I was concerned that by having these elements of myth and magic, the other stories might be overshadowed. The flipside can also be true, however. I've read enough stories and books where it felt like the author didn't really know how to end the story and just sort of said, "Well, maybe I'll throw in something sort of spectacular and magic, and that will work."

It's really important to make the magic, the myth, the supernatural, whatever it is, be worked cleanly into the story so that the reader accepts it as part of the world - as do the characters in the novel - without it feeling like a jarring change of pace. One of the things I've tried to do is weave the story in TOUCH with these myths so that the myths and magic are treated with the weight of reality, becoming an ongoing part of the characters' lives as opposed to single, solitary parlor tricks that are sprinkled through without purpose other than to raise amazement. Although, of course, I also hope to raise amazement.

I should say, by the way, that I think there are a number of authors—my contemporaries—who are doing this, who are writing work that I'd call mythical realism, who are reworking the "rules" of magic and literature, even if they aren't calling it as such. Ultimately though, while I’ve had a lot of people tell me how certain pieces of myth, of magic, certain images from the book have really stayed with them, I think that it’s really the people in stories that are the most magical, that without them, all you really end up with is a little sleight of hand. It's not that hard to write something that's beautiful on the surface if you don't mind it being emotional empty.

For me, the balance comes at least partially from your question about loving my characters: I do love the characters and the people around them, and while Sawgamet is place full of myths and legends and monsters and witches, first and foremost, it's a home for Stephen, for Jeannot, for their families.

The novel is steeped in Inuit folklore. Might you briefly explain what you find most fascinating in these Inuit legends?

Touch has been compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, but I don’t think what I’m writing is really magical realism. As much as I admire Gabriel Garcia Marquez—reading his work was one of those moments in my life as a reader that changed everything—and other writers of magical realism, I've been using the term mythical realism because I am, I hope, doing something new and different.

It might seem like I'm parsing a term, but the forms of magical realism—whether the central and south American versions or the European versions—are rooted firmly in their own place and traditions, and I think that taking those frameworks and just mapping them over our own landscape is problematic.

When you do that, you end up with a palimpsest, where the ghostly traces of what you have borrowed always show through your own writing. You can create terrific work that way, but I was born and raised in Canada by American parents, and I've lived in the USA since college, so my own history dictates that I take a sort of oblique angle in terms of the way I look at my own cultures: by reworking national mythologies, I am, I hope, creating new work.

The Inuit mythology is interesting to me because it's something that was rattling around the edges of the storytelling that I was aware of, and while I've always been fascinated by myth—I remember reading Greek and Roman and Norse myths over and over again as a child—I wanted to work with something that was both sort of familiar and brand new at the same time. Of course, some of it was simply dictated by the place and the time: it is set in northern Canada.

As a side note, in an early draft, I used the term Inuit instead of Indian or Eskimo, and had some strong reactions from readers who thought it read like I was trying to clean up the language. That was amusing to me since Inuit was in use at the time the novel was set (1870-1940's), but I thought it was a valid point: the word, “Inuit,” read wrong.

I’m a big J. Robert Lennon fan, who teaches a “Reading for Writers: Weird Stories” class at Cornell where you earned your MFA. I’ve seen his 2007 syllabus, and the reading list was incredible— Kelly Link, Stanislaw Lem, Lynne Tillman, Stephen Dixon, Donald Barthelme, George Saunders and many other fantastic writers. Did you take his class? If so, did the course influence your approach to TOUCH?

I did take the weird stories class, but I don't think it influenced my approach to TOUCH. I actually started working on TOUCH before I even applied to graduate school—a good chunk of the first chapter was actually one of my application pieces for graduate school.

The weird stories class was really interesting, though I'd say that there were probably a bunch of works that I didn't actually like. One of the problems with experimental fiction is that, because you are experimenting, it tends to fail more often than not, which is not a problem, but I felt like some of the authors that we read privileged being weird over being good. Sort of like there would be a story where it was brilliant and amazing and there'd be a point where—at least to me—it seemed like some obvious choices could be made—the character should die or get married or whatever—and the author would instead just decide to throw in a magic talking octopus, because that would be different.

One of my favorite books by John is PIECES FOR THE LEFT HAND, and one of the things I like about it is that although the book could conceivable fall under that "weird stories" rubric—it’s about a hundred two page stories—they all stand and work on their own as stories.

I’m not a Luddite. Sometime later this year, I’ll probably buy an e-reader. I’ll do so with regret, because I really love printed text. I love how I can totally lose all sense of the outside world when I’m reading a book—and I worry that I’ll never be able to achieve that sense of totally immersion when reading on an e-reader.A couple of days ago, I caught a podcast of J. Robert Lennon interviewing Nicholson Baker. Besides writing some of my favorite novels (Mezzanine, A Box of Matches, The Anthologist), Baker’s also writes thoughtfully on text preservation and the effects of technology on the written word. Recall, for example, his 2009 New Yorker article on the Kindle. Baker seems to be more comfortable with e-readers nowadays, yet he still “connect[s] better with a printed book.”“[T]here’s somehow a kind of connection that the text [provides]… There’s a more complete experience. I remember it more. I come away with more. I don’t know if it’s just my own [experience], you know, just because I grew up in a paper-based world or something, but it’s still true for me.”So it looks like Baker’s not getting total immersion from his e-reader.

I also worry about how an e-reader will change my relation to the books I own. I doubt I’ll build the same kind of attachment to an electronic file as I might form with the ratty paperbacks I buy at thrift stores.I’m not a rare book collector, but over the years I’ve picked up a few rare items. Sixteen years ago, I came across a set of uncorrected galleys to Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time. Conroy, as I wrote recently, was my first creative writing teacher, so the galleys to his masterpiece have personal meaning to me. The galleys were previously owned by Carter Burden, the one-time publisher of The Village Voice who had amassed one of the finest collection of twentieth-century US first editions. To house the galleys, Burden had a special case made.

Another mentor, John McNally, introduced me to Stuart Dybek’s short stories. After McNally had me read Dybek’s “Pet Milk,” I sought out all of Dybek’s work. Eventually, I came across his 1993 chapbook, The Story of Mist (State Street Press Chapbooks). The flash fiction collected within this volume is gorgeous. A few years after I bought the chapbook, Dybek came to Washington as part of the Pen Faulkner reading series. ZZ Packer was also reading on the same bill. Afterwards, lines formed so that audience members could meet the writers. Dybek looked startled when he saw I wanted him to sign my copy of his chapbook. Most people were asking him to sign copies of his then-current collection, I Sailed with Magellan—and here I was with some obscure chapbook that had been issued more than a decade prior. Dybek seemed wary. I sensed he feared I was some kind of fanatic—a mad fan who might attempt to chat him up for hours or even stalk him after the event. It was awkward. He had been friendly with almost everyone else in line, laughing and telling jokes. With me, silence.That same night, my wife and I talked with ZZ Packer for maybe five minutes. She was charming, totally at ease with all the attention she was receiving for her collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which we had her sign for us.Still, despite that experience, I'll always treasure my copy of The Story of Mist.

Donald Barthelme’s The Emerald (Sylvester & Orphanos) fills out my “rare book collection.” After this story appeared in Esquire, a small Los Angeles publisher (Sylvester & Orphanos) published a handsome hardbound limited-edition. Barthelme signed each of the 330 copies. Somehow my wife acquired a copy, giving it to me as a birthday gift a few years back. This book is just so beautifully printed and bound. What pictures I’ve snapped just cannot do it justice.

I guess to some degree I’m fetishizing the printed object, or at least already mournful that in the coming era of the e-book, there may be little room for these types of cherished mementos. Five years from now, are printed galleys even going to exist? And autographed e-books? Can such things even exist?However…yesterday…. my thoughts changed. While future generations may never know what a limited edition chapbook might be, I saw something that made me confident that, in one form or another, the fetishizing of the printed object will continue.Yesterday, I took my son to Kids Tech University, an awesome program developed by Virginia Tech’s Bioinformatics Institute to spur youngsters’ interest in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). In the morning, a scientist spoke about her research in Antarctic core drilling samples. In the afternoon, the kids explored exhibits of various University-supported engineering projects. An exhibit on 3-D Printing, a manufacturing process that can reproduce any physical object, caught my attention. I first read about 3-D Printing last year in a New York Times article. Last month, I heard again about it through an NPR Talk of the Nation story, but seeing the exhibit astounded me.As the Times wrote,“A 3-D printer, which has nothing to do with paper printers, creates an object by stacking one layer of material — typically plastic or metal — on top of another, much the same way a pastry chef makes baklava with sheets of phyllo dough.”Digital pictures are taken of an object, which are then computer-processed, building up a digital record of the object’s dimensionality. The objects, which can be comprised of many components (including moving parts) are then “printed out” by spraying layer after layer of materials upon each other, allowing for each layer to dry before another is applied. The objects exhibited this weekend were made from rubber and resins, but other materials, like copper and concrete, can be used. To print out a fully-functioning adjustable wrench might take several hours but it’s amazing that objects which used to be hand-forged or assembled from molded parts can now be manufactured more effortlessly with much greater precision. Although I didn’t ask, my guess is that the process needn’t begin with the photographing of an actual object. Instead, one could probably design the objects through computer animated designs.One of the exhibitors said that the images can even begin as CT scans, allowing surgeons the ability to print-out a patient’s body organs to get a better idea, say, where malignant tumors may reside. As the technology progresses, I wonder if fully-bound books might be printed out this way. Theoretically, 3-D Printing might actually expand book culture’s fetishizing of the printed object, allowing for the custom printing of newer, more fantastical books. The other day, in my post about The Official Catalogue of the Library of Potential Literature, I quoted the Adam Robinson’s idea of a “wooden novel” composed of different “drawers.” Today, such a thing might not be possible. However, through 3-D Printing, it’s conceivable that such a book might yet be made, allowing readers new ways to immerse themselves in the printed word. Meaning, the technology behind the printed book need not be dead.